02856cam a22003017 4500001000700000003000500007005001700012008004100029100001700070245011000087260006600197490004200263500001900305520142300324530006101747538007201808538003601880690007501916690005801991690011402049690012102163690005702284700001902341710004202360830007702402856003802479856003702517w11740NBER20150802202931.0150802s2005 mau||||fs|||| 000 0 eng d1 aBerman, Eli.10aHard Targetsh[electronic resource]:bTheory and Evidence on Suicide Attacks /cEli Berman, David Laitin. aCambridge, Mass.bNational Bureau of Economic Researchc2005.1 aNBER working paper seriesvno. w11740 aNovember 2005.3 aWho chooses suicide attacks? Though rebels typically target poor countries, suicide attacks are just as likely to target rich democracies. Though many groups have grievances, suicide attacks are favored by the radical religious. Though rebels often kill coreligionists, they seldom use suicide attacks to do so. We model the choice of tactics by rebels, bearing in mind that a successful suicide attack imposes the ultimate cost on the attacker and the organization. We first ask what a suicide attacker would have to believe to be deemed rational. We then embed the attacker and other operatives in a club good model which emphasizes the function of voluntary religious organizations as providers of benign local public goods. The sacrifices which these groups demand solve a free-rider problem in the cooperative production of public goods. These sacrifices make clubs well suited for organizing suicide attacks, a tactic in which defection by operatives (including the attacker) endangers the entire organization. The model also analyzes the choice of suicide attacks as a tactic, predicting that suicide will be used when targets are well protected and when damage is great. Those predictions are consistent with the patterns described above. The model has testable implications for tactic choice of terrorists and for damage achieved by different types of terrorists, which we find to be consistent with the data. aHardcopy version available to institutional subscribers. aSystem requirements: Adobe [Acrobat] Reader required for PDF files. aMode of access: World Wide Web. 7aH56 - National Security and War2Journal of Economic Literature class. 7aZ12 - Religion2Journal of Economic Literature class. 7aD71 - Social Choice • Clubs • Committees • Associations2Journal of Economic Literature class. 7aD74 - Conflict • Conflict Resolution • Alliances • Revolutions2Journal of Economic Literature class. 7aH40 - General2Journal of Economic Literature class.1 aLaitin, David.2 aNational Bureau of Economic Research. 0aWorking Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research)vno. w11740.4 uhttp://www.nber.org/papers/w1174041uhttp://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w11740